The present invention generally relates to firearms, and more particularly to a mechanism related to locking the manual safety mechanism of a pistol.
Prior devices, often referred to as a “manual safety” in the industry, are known that block the discharge of a pistol by disabling the firing apparatus. The firing apparatus typically includes a trigger, trigger bar, sear, and hammer which contacts a firing pin that strikes a chambered cartridge. The sear generally operates to hold the hammer in a cocked “ready-to-fire” position. These components are functionally linked so that pulling the trigger activates the sear which releases a hammer or striker to strike a chambered cartridge and discharge the pistol. When activated, manual safety devices may arrest the movement of one or more of the firing apparatus components to disable the firing assembly and the pistol's ability to be discharged by a trigger pull. Such devices are generally operated by the user physically selecting the position of the manual safety by placing it “on” or “off” in the safety position as desired.
These prior devices, however, do not generally provide a pistol user with the option to manually lock these devices in an activated or “safe” position in which the firing apparatus is disabled. Although optimal methods to secure a pistol to prevent inadvertent discharge or unauthorized access are to fully unload the pistol and store it in a lockable box, in a safe, or to affix an external lock such as those supplied by most pistol manufacturers, an added measure of precaution can be achieved via a manually-operated supplemental mechanism, that when activated, can physically engage such prior devices to lock them in their “safe” position.